A large and growing population of people enjoy entertainment or digital media through consumption of digital content items, such as music, movies, images, books and other types of digital content. Many people today consume digital media through a wide variety of electronic devices. Among these electronic devices are electronic book readers, cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable media players, tablets, netbooks, and the like.
As more content is made available in digital form, the economic landscape for media creation, production, and distribution is evolving. This is particularly the case for music, movies, and electronic books (or “ebooks”). Such media items may be distributed online to electronic devices, without production of a portable physical medium, such as a tape cassette, CD (compact disc), DVD (digital video disc), or a physical paper-based book. As a result, many of the transaction costs associated with traditional channels of distribution on physical media are being reduced or eliminated entirely. This leads to the possibility of new economic and social models involving selling, lending, and borrowing of digital items.
Electronic distribution of information has gained in importance with the proliferation of personal computers, mobile devices and mobile phones, and electronic distribution has undergone a tremendous upsurge in popularity as the Internet has become widely available. With the widespread use of the Internet, it has become possible to quickly and inexpensively distribute large, coherent units of information using electronic technologies.